Program for my sister?

[AaronM]

My sister (in-law) wants to get back into weight lifting. She's just over 30 and can train 3x/week. She has my old power rack, a 300lb cheap bb set, and a bench now. A year or two ago she got her squat up to ~160lb, OHP to ~95lb, and bench to ~130lb. I think she was running stronglifts and then tapered off to lower reps. She hasn't trained at all this year.

She isn't interested in competing or doing bodybuilding.com routines. I was thinking she could run SSLP for a couple months? Squat 3x/week, adding 5lb each session (start with empty barbell). Alternate OHP and bench, adding 5lb each session and then drop to 2.5lb when bar speed slows. What's a good deadlift scheme? Every workout for a couple weeks then 2x/week?

Any suggestions @chromoly ? I'm clueless about female programming. I tried helping my wife out, but we decided it was best for our marriage if I didn't I managed to teach my wife how to squat, so I should be able to help my sister with basic lifting technique.

[d0uevenlift]

Have her run a quick LP and then hop on The Bridge.

[KyleSchuant]

I have worked with a lot of novice women, the most recent one after 3 months maxed out and could squat 255lb, bench 110 and deadlift 295. But she was a bit larger than most. If your sister hasn't worked out at all this year, that means she doesn't love this stuff. So she'll have to be eased into it. I'd aim at taking 3 months for her to get back to where she was, or a little past it. Remember too there'll likely be interruptions over the holiday period, she mightn't get into it until January.

Normally a 15kg/33lb women's bar is needed, but going on her old lifts she should be able to start with the 45lb with no troubles in press and bench.

Workout A
Squat 45lb + 5lbs a time 5 reps x 3 sets; whenever a weight is missed, in the following session repeat it, but go to 3 reps x 5 sets, and heavy/light squats (light squats on deadlift day, 15% less than heavy day). Any missed heavy day reps, repeat the weight next time, if it's made then drop the increments to 2lbs.
Press 45lb +3lb 5 reps x 5 sets; whenever a weight is missed, in the following session repeat the weight, but do 3 reps for 8 sets, and drop the increment to 1lb.
Deadflift 95lb + 5lbs a time 5 reps x 3 sets; once it hits bodyweight or 225, whichever is lesser, go to 3 sets of 3

Workout B
Squat progress from A
Bench 45lb +5lb 5 reps x 5 sets; whenever a weight is missed, in the following session repeat the weight, but do 3 reps for 8 sets, and drop the increment to 3lbs, missing the weight later means repeating it with the same reps/sets, but dropping the increment to 2lb, and later if necessary (probably not) to 1lb.
Third exercise varies

The third exercise in B varies.

Young women of a healthy bodyweight with good bodily awareness will do powercleans if you or some other competent person can teach them. Start with a 45lb bar, add 5lbs a time and do 3 reps for 5 sets. Handle missed reps etc as for bench.

Young women of a healthy bodyweight who are klutzes can do chinups - banded or negatives. Start with a total of 5 reps, spread over the workout, and add 1 rep each time.

You women who are overweight will do barbell rows. Typically upper back will be a bit weaker than you'd expect, so start the same weight and progress them as with cleans, but 8 reps for 3 sets. Or if you have a lat pulldown use that.

Older (50+) women will do farmer's walks, but this won't apply here. I do give farmer's walks to younger ones if they have a history of lower back and/or shoulder troubles, but you didn't mention that.

In your sister's case having lifted before, I would expect her to be able to start with more, eg a 95-110lb squat work set on day one. But you have to see it to judge it, and starting too easy might somewhat counteract the discomfort of having her brother tell her what to do, and help her get into the habit of lifting again.

Absent illness or injury, this should keep her going for 3 months which is at most 39 workouts. That's 38 chances for the squat to go up, and 18-19 chances for press, bench and deadlift to go up. With no missed reps that'd mean a 235 work set squat, 99lb press, etc. She's unlikely to do that, but it'll be more than last time she lifted. With a very conservative start weight, a plan for dropping increments and going heavy/light etc, deloads shouldn't be necessary in the first 3 months.

[perman]

I have worked with a lot of novice women, the most recent one after 3 months maxed out and could squat 255lb, bench 110 and deadlift 295. But she was a bit larger than most. If your sister hasn't worked out at all this year, that means she doesn't love this stuff. So she'll have to be eased into it. I'd aim at taking 3 months for her to get back to where she was, or a little past it. Remember too there'll likely be interruptions over the holiday period, she mightn't get into it until January.

Normally a 15kg/33lb women's bar is needed, but going on her old lifts she should be able to start with the 45lb with no troubles in press and bench.

Workout A
Squat 45lb + 5lbs a time 5 reps x 3 sets; whenever a weight is missed, in the following session repeat it, but go to 3 reps x 5 sets, and heavy/light squats (light squats on deadlift day, 15% less than heavy day). Any missed heavy day reps, repeat the weight next time, if it's made then drop the increments to 2lbs.
Press 45lb +3lb 5 reps x 5 sets; whenever a weight is missed, in the following session repeat the weight, but do 3 reps for 8 sets, and drop the increment to 1lb.
Deadflift 95lb + 5lbs a time 5 reps x 3 sets; once it hits bodyweight or 225, whichever is lesser, go to 3 sets of 3

Workout B
Squat progress from A
Bench 45lb +5lb 5 reps x 5 sets; whenever a weight is missed, in the following session repeat the weight, but do 3 reps for 8 sets, and drop the increment to 3lbs, missing the weight later means repeating it with the same reps/sets, but dropping the increment to 2lb, and later if necessary (probably not) to 1lb.
Third exercise varies

The third exercise in B varies.

Young women of a healthy bodyweight with good bodily awareness will do powercleans if you or some other competent person can teach them. Start with a 45lb bar, add 5lbs a time and do 3 reps for 5 sets. Handle missed reps etc as for bench.

Young women of a healthy bodyweight who are klutzes can do chinups - banded or negatives. Start with a total of 5 reps, spread over the workout, and add 1 rep each time.

You women who are overweight will do barbell rows. Typically upper back will be a bit weaker than you'd expect, so start the same weight and progress them as with cleans, but 8 reps for 3 sets. Or if you have a lat pulldown use that.

Older (50+) women will do farmer's walks, but this won't apply here. I do give farmer's walks to younger ones if they have a history of lower back and/or shoulder troubles, but you didn't mention that.

In your sister's case having lifted before, I would expect her to be able to start with more, eg a 95-110lb squat work set on day one. But you have to see it to judge it, and starting too easy might somewhat counteract the discomfort of having her brother tell her what to do, and help her get into the habit of lifting again.

Absent illness or injury, this should keep her going for 3 months which is at most 39 workouts. That's 38 chances for the squat to go up, and 18-19 chances for press, bench and deadlift to go up. With no missed reps that'd mean a 235 work set squat, 99lb press, etc. She's unlikely to do that, but it'll be more than last time she lifted. With a very conservative start weight, a plan for dropping increments and going heavy/light etc, deloads shouldn't be necessary in the first 3 months.

So TLDR:

Have her run a quick LP and then hop on The Bridge.

[AaronM]

I have worked with a lot of novice women, the most recent one after 3 months maxed out and could squat 255lb, bench 110 and deadlift 295. But she was a bit larger than most. If your sister hasn't worked out at all this year, that means she doesn't love this stuff...

My sister isn't huge, but she isn't small either. She's been going through a divorce this year, and had to stop attending the gym in her area due to things related to said divorce. Kinda my fault she hasn't lifted the last couple months since she was waiting for me to buy a Titan X3 so I could sell her my old rack

LP to The Bridge sounds like a good plan for the next several months.

Question, she's trained barefoot in the past, any potential complications from "heavy" squatting barefoot in the long run?

[mgil]

Squatting barefoot is okay if she’s not dropping plates, has a clean floor, and decent dorsiflextion.

At some point she will want shoes. She’ll know when.

[Wilhelm]

At some point squatting barefoot, i started getting some turf toe symptoms.

That shit hurts.

[AaronM]

@Wilhelm , how did you get turf toe without walking around like a ballerina?

[Wilhelm]

Stress on those connective tissues i suppose. It was classic as far as i could tell. Hurt like hell bending or flexing the toe upwards.
Rolling forward in a normal manner too. Had to favor it by stepping flat and picking up the foot up early when walking.

All gone now.

[chromoly]

@AaronM I agree with everyone else. Put her on linear progression, whether that's SS or Stronglifts or Greyskull LP....

But -- this is important for compliance-- what are her goals? Get some specific goals like 1 month, 3 months, 6 month maybe... Not interested in competing is good to know, but "wanting to get back into weight lifting" isn't that specific. A few extra assistance exercises or different rep ranges can go a long way in making a program "fun" for someone.

[AaronM]

@AaronM I agree with everyone else. Put her on linear progression, whether that's SS or Stronglifts or Greyskull LP....

But -- this is important for compliance-- what are her goals? Get some specific goals like 1 month, 3 months, 6 month maybe... Not interested in competing is good to know, but "wanting to get back into weight lifting" isn't that specific. A few extra assistance exercises or different rep ranges can go a long way in making a program "fun" for someone.

Her stated goals are to "feel better, be in shape, long-term health." So I'm thinking 2-3 "boring" months to get her lifts back up and work on technique, and then something like The Bridge will get her exposed to alternate lifts and self-programming. Judging from what she's done in the past she enjoys getting her #'s on the main lifts up. Guessing her goals will change/come into focus after a couple months.

No clue if she has time or a desire for conditioning/cardio (whatever that is), as I know nothing about that kind of stuff. I try to not expend more calories than I have to since I have to eat so much to maintain 198-200lb...

[Manveer]

There was an interesting comment I heard yesterday from Mike Israetel on the latest JuggLife podcast (which I've only listened to half of so far...). He said that doing more work in the first month of training for an untrained person gets you zero (or nearly zero) additional benefit. If compliance will be an issue, maybe you can start with really quick, absolute barebones workouts to build the habit.

[AaronM]

Helped my sister with her first LP session today. We worked on squats with an empty barbell for 4 or 5 sets of 5. She used to lift with a friend that was into crossfit, so she's used to high bar ATG non-sense, which I guess really agitated her hip flexors last year. Low bar will be a bit of a learning curve I think. But it should be better for her hip flexor pain long-term.

OHP was an emtpy barbell for 5x5, no problems. She was using a very wide grip with bent wrists, so we worked on fixing that. Deadlifted 95lb for 2x5 on blocks, then 135 2x5. She's gonna need to work a lot on not moving the bar around when getting setup. She was deadlifting 200 last year, so hopefully she can hit that for reps this time on LP.

I wrote her up a program to follow for a couple months, so we'll see how things go moving forward.

[chromoly]

Helped my sister with her first LP session today. We worked on squats with an empty barbell for 4 or 5 sets of 5. She used to lift with a friend that was into crossfit, so she's used to high bar ATG non-sense, which I guess really agitated her hip flexors last year. Low bar will be a bit of a learning curve I think. But it should be better for her hip flexor pain long-term.

OHP was an emtpy barbell for 5x5, no problems. She was using a very wide grip with bent wrists, so we worked on fixing that. Deadlifted 95lb for 2x5 on blocks, then 135 2x5. She's gonna need to work a lot on not moving the bar around when getting setup. She was deadlifting 200 last year, so hopefully she can hit that for reps this time on LP.

I wrote her up a program to follow for a couple months, so we'll see how things go moving forward.

I don't know about you, but low bar will aggravate my hip flexors more than high bar. Low bar can cause hip flexor problems too, if you're not careful about the knee slide.

What's important is that she squats-- whether it's high bar or low bar, doesn't really matter that much. If she's interested in low bar, I think she should low bar. But if she wants to do some high bar squatting, that wouldn't be the end of the world. As long as she's staying tight throughout and not relaxing at the bottom, a much deeper than parallel high bar OR low bar squat should even be fine, and not cause any hip flexor pain.

[AaronM]

Helped my sister with her first LP session today. We worked on squats with an empty barbell for 4 or 5 sets of 5. She used to lift with a friend that was into crossfit, so she's used to high bar ATG non-sense, which I guess really agitated her hip flexors last year. Low bar will be a bit of a learning curve I think. But it should be better for her hip flexor pain long-term.

OHP was an emtpy barbell for 5x5, no problems. She was using a very wide grip with bent wrists, so we worked on fixing that. Deadlifted 95lb for 2x5 on blocks, then 135 2x5. She's gonna need to work a lot on not moving the bar around when getting setup. She was deadlifting 200 last year, so hopefully she can hit that for reps this time on LP.

I wrote her up a program to follow for a couple months, so we'll see how things go moving forward.

I don't know about you, but low bar will aggravate my hip flexors more than high bar. Low bar can cause hip flexor problems too, if you're not careful about the knee slide.

What's important is that she squats-- whether it's high bar or low bar, doesn't really matter that much. If she's interested in low bar, I think she should low bar. But if she wants to do some high bar squatting, that wouldn't be the end of the world. As long as she's staying tight throughout and not relaxing at the bottom, a much deeper than parallel high bar OR low bar squat should even be fine, and not cause any hip flexor pain.

I've only done high bar squats twice in my life, so I don't know much about them. I know how to low bar squat, and I know that ATG high bar gave my sister hip flexor pain. So, we'll make sure she avoids knee slide at the bottom, and goes just below parallel. If LBBS mess up her hip flexors, I'll let her resort back to high bar as long as she cuts off depth to just below parallel.